I assume most of us have already heard of the WannCrypt worm that was been causing havoc in something like 74 countries with the bulk of the infected systems being run on either out of lifecycle operating systems and anything below Win 10 that isn't up to date in the last couple of months. This is a ransomware worm that targets all document files on the infected drive and encrypts them. Once completed it forces a blue screen and reboot followed up with a message that to recover your files you must pay a certain amount of bitcoin to have your files decrypted.

Microsoft has released hotfixes for both currently supported systems and "out of lifecycle" systems including XP (x86 - x64 - embedded) Win 8 (x86 - x64 - Win 8.1 is supported by auto update) and Server 2003. Here's the link to the Microsoft Technet page with links to more information and directly download the patches for the "out of lifecycle" systems.

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Customer Guidance for WannaCrypt attacks

MSRC TeamMay 12, 20170

Microsoft solution available to protect additional products

Today many of our customers around the world and the critical systems they depend on were victims of malicious “WannaCrypt” software. Seeing businesses and individuals affected by cyberattacks, such as the ones reported today, was painful. Microsoft worked throughout the day to ensure we understood the attack and were taking all possible actions to protect our customers. This blog spells out the steps every individual and business should take to stay protected. Additionally, we are taking the highly unusual step of providing a security update for all customers to protect Windows platforms that are in custom support only, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003. Customers running Windows 10 were not targeted by the attack today.

I wonder whether spammers post in a foreign language as a deliberate strategy. The Russian ones often pique my curiosity into using Google translate. On this one, all you need to know is acheter is "buy" and vendre is "sell".

--------------"[...] the type of information we find in living systems is beyond the creative means of purely material processes [...] Who or what is such an ultimate source of information? [...] from a theistic perspective, such an information source would presumably have to be God."

Inspired by some poor relatives who fall for every form of snake oil Alex Jones and company peddle, I had a thought about eating clay.

Back when I was in school and would come across the word Pica, it was always defined as something like "The compulsion to eat things that aren't food, i.e. clay." Clay was always the example. While eating clay is probably generally pointless, and probably only very helpful if you've ingested some strong poison, clays do contain several minerals, and organisms can adapt to crave things they need but don't understand, so is it possible that craving clay can in some limited circumstances stem from a mineral deficiency and thus be a rational response?

Inspired by some poor relatives who fall for every form of snake oil Alex Jones and company peddle, I had a thought about eating clay.

Back when I was in school and would come across the word Pica, it was always defined as something like "The compulsion to eat things that aren't food, i.e. clay." Clay was always the example. While eating clay is probably generally pointless, and probably only very helpful if you've ingested some strong poison, clays do contain several minerals, and organisms can adapt to crave things they need but don't understand, so is it possible that craving clay can in some limited circumstances stem from a mineral deficiency and thus be a rational response?

The question that makes it relevant to this site is “is it adaptive?”. My suspicion is yes, but that pica is the effect of that trait gone too far.

--------------"Creationists think everything Genesis says is true. I don't even think Phil Collins is a good drummer." --J. Carr

"I suspect that the English grammar books where you live are outdated" --G. Gaulin